


if you ever need a fool

by lovebeyondmeasure



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, First Kiss, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 00:01:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13329219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: “Cormoran Strike, I can't-” she said, looking away. “You cannot keep doing this to me, I can’t bear it.”“Doing what?” he felt lost, as though she’d been having a different conversation this whole time.“You do these- things, you say things, and it’s as if-” she inhaled deeply, still not looking at him. “It’s as if you…. care about me.”“Of course I care about you,” he said, but knew that wasn’t what she’d meant.





	if you ever need a fool

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lindmea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindmea/gifts).



> Prompted by the wonderful lindmea, who asked for prompt 11: "I thought you didn't want me." Who loves suffering? US!!
> 
> Title from "Where The Skies Are Blue" by the Lumineers: 
> 
> _Wanted to change, turn into what you love, mama_  
>  _And I woulda gave all of my best to you_
> 
> _So, if you ever need a fool_  
>  _Who will give you a love so true_  
>  _You can always find me where the skies are blue_

“It’s not that,” Cormoran nearly growled.

“What is it, then?” Robin challenged huffily, taking the stairs much faster than Cormoran could manage. He let her rush her way up, and told himself that it was only natural to appreciate a figure like hers.

“It’s not that you didn’t look nice! Of course you look nice!” he said, once he reached the office. Robin was halfway out of her strappy heels, and Cormoran mourned the loss of them; when she wore the things, they were just about of a height.

“Of course I look nice, fine, so what was that business about my hair?” she snapped, tossing one of the shoes down with a clatter. Cormoran began tugging off his own fancy clothing, hanging the Italian suit jacket on the hook with no care for its expense.

“Your hair was fine!” he said. Robin rolled her eyes and threw the other shoe down.

“Then why’d you go on about how you didn’t like it?”

“I didn’t _go on_ about it!”

“You did!”

“Well, that’s not what I- I was selling the bit, Robin!”

“There’s no call to be rude about it, though!”

She stood up, and even without the shoes could look him pretty well in the eye. “I worked hard to get it to look like this, you know!”

“I know!” Cormoran threw his hands up in frustration. Why was she harping on this one thing? It had been a successful excursion, and they’d be paid well for it. Why then did she feel the need to be so upset?

“I don’t appreciate you devaluing my work-”

“I never-”

“You did!”

Now they were glaring at each other, and he had no idea how it had come to this. They’d been getting on so well at the party, and he hadn’t thought his remarks were in such excess. What had gone wrong?

“Robin,” he sighed, rubbing his eyebrows. “What did I do? Really.”

“You were rude,” she snapped, and sat in her desk chair, looking away from him. Her color was high, and he couldn’t help but notice how the flush made her look so vibrantly alive, and really, her hair did look nice-

“Your hair looks nice,” he said, in as apologetic a tone as he could muster. She huffed. “Really, it does. It looks…. lovely.”

She reached one hand to pat the updo, almost reflexively. “I worked really hard on it,” she said, softer now.

“I can tell,” he said, leaning against the wall and loosening his tie. “You were brilliant in there.”

She turned now, to look at him. “Really?” she asked, and sometimes he forgot how young she really was, how little experience she had in this field beyond what she’d leant on the job.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “Absolutely brilliant. I couldn’t ask for a better partner.”

Now her flush was darker, blooming up to her ears, and he followed it, the graceful curve of her neck…

“Thanks,” she said after a moment. “I’m sorry I’m being such a brat. You weren’t that awful, really.”

He laughed, and it seemed to break the last of their tension. “Not that awful, really? Oh, high praise indeed.”

She twisted her mouth at him, a smile in her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. And I’m sorry,” he said, “if I made it seem like I didn’t think you’d done good work. You’re… very valuable to me. To this business.”

She nodded, looking down. “Thanks,” she said, and she seemed…. less happy than a moment before.

“Yeah,” he said, and now the mood had shifted again, and he didn’t know what he’d said wrong. He wanted that easy camaraderie back, the comfortable give-and-take they’d fallen into. But it was a fleeting thing, most of the time, anyway.

“I’d better,” he started, moving to go into his office, resolving silently to try again later.

“Would you help me take it all down?” she asked abruptly. “My hair, I mean. I think it’d be easier with someone who could see the back of my head.”

“Ah, sure,” he said, startled.

“It’s a bit itchy, and besides, you said you like it better down,” she said, and he remembered saying that; was that what had started this whole thing?

“Just tell me if I do something wrong,” he said, coming to stand behind her chair. He felt awkward and ungainly, leaning towards Robin’s slim figure, but she sat relaxed as he loomed over her. “Ah. Where should I start?”

Her hair really was twisted and pinned into a work of art, the glossy gold held firmly by a veritable army of bronze bobby pins.

“Just start pulling pins from the outside in, and we’ll see what happens,” Robin said. “You can hand them to me.”

“Alright,” he said, and gingerly began to pull one out. She laughed.

“You can be a bit firmer than that, I won’t break,” she said.

He nodded, then realized she couldn’t see him behind her, and simply tugged on the pin. It slipped free, pulling a few strands of hair with it, and Cormoran looked at the tiny thing in wonder.

“Give it here and do the next one, we haven’t got all day,” Robin said, and there was that ease between them he’d wished for. Cormoran set to his task with a will, trying to decipher what exactly Robin had done to get her hair to stay up like that.

“How did you do this?” he asked, as a single pin’s removal tumbled a whole pile of hair down. He carefully combed his fingers through the fall, making sure he hadn’t missed one. Robin seemed to be sitting very still.

“Do what?” she asked.

“Do… all this,” he said, gesturing to her head. “You got your hair to look like this without even being able to see it, and I can’t even make mine lay flat.”

She laughed at his self deprecation. “Your hair is fine,” she said. “And I rigged up an extra mirror, so I could sort of see what I was doing, and I just followed the instructions. I mean, I’ve been doing my own hair for years now.”

“Well, you’re a bloody hair genius, that’s what I think,” Cormoran said, pulling free what seemed to be the last of the pins. Her hair hung, a bit kinked up from the twists it had been forced into, and a bit sticky from hairspray. He ran his fingers through it anyway, searching out the few pins he’d missed.

As he did, Robin sighed, and leaned slightly into his hands; he froze, his fingers full of her hair, nearly cradling her head.

“Ah,” he said, unable to comprehend what was happening, and Robin stiffened. They held there, like a pair of statues, and Cormoran nearly held his breath. He didn’t want to make this- didn’t want it to be- ah, fuck it.

He, so very carefully, began rubbing Robin’s scalp, letting his bloody great hands do something gentle for once. Still hardly daring to breath, he rubbed his thumbs down to the nape of her neck, pressing against the tension he knew he would find there.

She sighed, a low, shaky sound, and he hoped desperately he hadn’t done the wrong thing.

“Alright, then?” he asked, as Robin’s head tipped forward, an invitation to continue if he’d ever seen one.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “That feels… good.”

“Good,” Cormoran echoed. “Good, I’m glad.” His hand were now cradling the back of her head, and he was rubbing the back of her neck, and he’d never had his hands on her for this long, or this intimately, and he was- fuck, fuck, he was far too invested in this, he should stop.

Just then, Robin sighed, and tipped her head back into his palms, and he couldn’t have stopped if he’d actually wanted to.

“Keep doing that, that feels amazing,” she said, and now Cormoran was fairly certain that he could stand here doing this forever, if Robin just kept making that blissful face.

She tilted her head to the right as he found a particularly tense spot on her neck, and he dug in a bit, and she moaned.

“Please, never stop doing that,” she said, eyes still closed.

“Alright,” he said, smiling a little, and she sighed again, smiling, then froze.

“What?” she asked, in a very small voice. Cormoran stopped his ministrations, sure now that he’d said the wrong thing.

“I just- I said alright?”

She pulled away from him, and Cormoran carefully detangled her hair from about his fingers and let her. Once more it was tense between them.

She turned in her chair to look up at him, and her face was closed off now.

“What did you mean, though?”

“I-” and how was he supposed to answer that?

She only looked at him, her eyes large in her face, and waited.

“I meant that if you liked it- if it felt good, then I’d, ah. I wouldn’t mind keeping going,” he said lamely.

“I asked you to do that forever and you said alright, that’s not the same thing,” she said, still in that small voice.

He could only look helpless and shrug.

“Cormoran Strike, I can’t-” she said, looking away. “You cannot keep doing this to me, I can’t bear it.”

“Doing what?” he felt lost, as though she’d been having a different conversation this whole time.

“You do these- things, you say things, and it’s as if-” she inhaled deeply, still not looking at him. “It’s as if you…. care about me.”

“Of course I care about you,” he said, but knew that wasn’t what she’d meant.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” she bit back. “You act like you care about me, you talk to me like it means something, then you pull back, and I can’t- you can’t keep doing this to me, Cormoran, I can’t stand it.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, bewildered, and immediately knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“I know you are,” she said, and now her mouth was bitter. “I know. Go, then. Go back to your office.”

“No, Robin, wait,” he said. “I’m sorry, what’s going on?”

“You know what’s going on!” she cried, looking up at him. She searched his face with a sense of growing bafflement. “Or… maybe you don’t. Do you honestly not know what I’m talking about?”

He opened his mouth, then shook his head. Words were no longer trustworthy.

“You….” she said, shaking her head. “You complete fool, Cormoran.”

He nodded. Her mouth untwisted to laugh.

“You do these things,” she said, “and you say things, that make me think you’re… that you’re…” She exhaled an angry breath. “That make me think you have feeling for me, but then the next thing you do or say, you treat me like I’m your secretary again, and you’re giving me whiplash, Mr. Strike. I can’t live like this, never knowing where we stand.”

That was precisely how he’d felt, as though their relationship was based on quicksand. He nodded jerkily.

“So… where do we stand, then?” she asked, and he watched the corner of her mouth turn down. “I think the ball’s rather in your court on this one.”

“I, ah.” Cormoran looked down, to where their feet were nearly touching, Robin’s bare toes next to his own oversized leather shoes. “I….”

“Don’t leave me hanging,” she asked, her voice low and soft. “Please.”

“I…” He really had no idea what he should say. “I think I’ve already mucked this up enough, don’t you?”

Robin shot up out of her chair, standing nearly toe-to-toe with him. “You have! Absolutely you have, and now you have to stop mucking about and just give me a proper answer, so I can stop living on fucking tenterhooks and move on with my life!”

He looked down into her angry face, her bright eyes, her flushed cheeks. Some of her messy hair had drifted into her face, and he reached out to tuck it back.

She slapped his hand away. “Stop that! Just tell me how you feel, so I can move on!”

He looked into her eyes once more. “Move on?”

She looks surprised, then flushed once more, as though she’d given something away. Cormoran’s brain, usually so reliable, suddenly placed several pieces of the puzzle together very rapidly, and he could have hit himself for being so utterly dense about this.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and Robin looked off to the side, about to turn away from him. He reached out, sliding his hand around her cheek to draw her closer, and kissed her uncomprehending mouth.

“But,” she said against his lips. He leaned back. “I thought-”

“What?” he asked, not letting go of her.

“I thought you didn’t want me,” she said, lost.

“Perish the thought,” he said, and pulled her close again, and this time she moved with him, and she kissed him back, and why hadn’t he done this sooner? Why hadn’t he done this the day she’d walked through the door without that damned ring on her finger, why had he waited all these months?

Kissing Robin was like- like swallowing fireworks. Like breathing in a sunrise. He could have stood there and kissed her for years.

“Why didn’t we do that sooner?” Robin asked, pulling back only slightly. He laughed and kissed her forehead.

“I have no bloody idea. Because I’m a total moron, I should think.”

“No you’re not!” she said. Then, looking at him, her mouth broke into a full grin, the kind that he loved so much. “Alright, yes, you rather are. But that’s okay.”

“Is it?” he asked, leaning in to kiss her again. “I’m sorry for being so slow.”

She smiled against his mouth. “I forgive you.”

“You do?” Cormoran felt as though his blood was rushing at a thousand meters a second, like he’d just won a race, like he was on top of the world. “That’s good, because we have a lot of time to catch up on.”

“What?” she asked.

He tugged her close and leaned down to press a kiss, gently, to the side of her jaw.

“We have-” Kiss. “A lot of-” Kiss. “Time-” Kiss. “To make up for.” Kiss, kiss, kiss. Robin shivered in his arms.

“Yeah, alright,” she said, then laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, busy memorizing the way her skin felt.

“I really didn’t think that this was at all the way this was going to go,” she said, smiling and dazed.

“You didn’t think I wanted you,” Cormoran said. “Right. Well, Robin, I have to say, that’s bollocks.”

“What?” she said, pulling back, offended. “What do you mean?”

“Because I would have to be blind, deaf, and possibly dead to not want you with every fibre of my being,” he said, pulling her back in. “And I may be a fool, but I’m not that big a fool.”

With a laugh, Robin leaned back into him, and he kissed her once, twice, and again for good measure.

“Mm, don’t stop,” she said.

“Alright,” he said once more, and kissed her.


End file.
